Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle (12 page)

Toffa lived in an apartment adjacent to Billie’s and was a stereotypical Rastafarian, complete with long, thick, ropelike dreadlocks. His accent was so thick it was almost impossible to understand a word he said. He was also one of the major marijuana dealers in Houston. I had never seen anything like his weed business before. Sure, over the years I had seen some operations here and there, but what I walked into this time was some serious action.

Once Toffa got to know me and felt I could be trusted, he decided to show me what was going on in an additional apartment he rented across the courtyard. When I walked in, my jaw almost hit the floor. The first thing I saw was a table with at least ten pounds of marijuana in a huge pile on top.

“Holy shit,” I said, unable to stop staring like it was the first naked girl I’d ever seen. “That’s a lot of weed.”

Toffa stood there smiling like a proud father.

Sitting all around the table were a bunch of people just cutting and chopping away, preparing the weed for plastic bags. Smoke was everywhere. I could barely even see my hands. My mind was doing backflips as I kept trying to process the scene.

Hanging out with Billie and Toffa became paramount among my weekly responsibilities. It was hard to say no to an endless supply of sweet, stinky weed that seemed to whisper in my ear day and night:
Pssst, hey, Booker, wanna get high again?
Hell, yes, I did.

Billie made me an offer. “Toffa and I want to put you down. You interested?” Putting me down, or setting me up with a side job of selling weed, was her way of helping me. She said, “Listen here. Fast money goes fast, and you have to stay on top of the game or it will pass you by. So are you in or out?”

That’s exactly how things went with my sister. Billie was by no means a dummy. She had graduated high school and had some book smarts for sure, but her methods of operation after her senior year were not based on a classroom education by any means. She had earned her degree from the streets, magna cum laude. My sister was the type who would see a less-than-practical opportunity and say, “This is probably a bad idea, but fuck it, let’s do it anyway.” And she would.

My mother always told me, “Junior, you know right from wrong. There’s no gray area.” However, Billie had made her own rule book:
The World Is Nothing but Gray Area.
I decided to follow her lead and started working for Toffa selling weed. I slung five-and ten-dollar bags all day, but I usually smoked more than I sold.

Eventually Toffa decided to cut his losses and fired me. We all had a good laugh at how terrible I was while we smoked some more.

Of course, I never mentioned any of this weed business to Lash. My brother had been against drugs since I could remember. Lash and I hadn’t seen each other much anyway.

I did bring my boy Zach around, though. We used to smoke together and laugh about Wendy’s and the people we worked with. We both especially hated the manager.

Zach was one of those people who influenced my mentality—and probably not for the best. I was sick and tired of the monotony in my life and was looking for a means to mix things up a little. Zach turned out to be just what I was seeking.

We developed a little crew of our own with Fran, Wendell, and Terry, and our clique became inseparable. We did everything together. Zach and I could not wait for the minutes to count down on the clock at Wendy’s. We would get out of there to meet up with the others and hit the club scene. We were populating the local circuit so often that everyone knew not to mess with any of us, because the rest were sure to be close behind. We became a force to be reckoned with, and it felt great to be a part of something so strong and secure.

We became the most important thing in our lives. We had each other’s backs at all times. For unity and flash, we wore matching Adidas warm-up suits with our new nicknames stitched across the backs. Mine was Nature Boy in honor of professional wrestler “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. Zach’s was Z-Boy. Wendell’s was Mr. Big Stuff, and Fran and Terry just used their regular names.

Our clique really had it going on. I used to step back occasionally, watch the guys while we were out, and think,
Wow! We’re some badass motherfuckers.
But then I would remember that Zach and I were still working at Wendy’s.
Man, this shit ain’t fuckin’ cool at all.

It did not take long for my grateful attitude toward Wendy’s to disintegrate into complete bitter regret. Now when I took people’s orders, instead of ringing them up at the register, I pocketed the cash. Every day I also walked out of that place with a big bag of hamburger and chicken patties to stock my refrigerator. I had a dog named Rocky who was growing up not on Purina Dog Chow but on my special blend of Wendy’s Chow. He was the best-fed canine in Houston, thanks to jolly old Dave Thomas.

When Z-Boy and I sat around with the other boys in the crew, we complained about our jobs all the time. By the autumn of 1986, at twenty-one years old, I had been working at Wendy’s for a couple of years. We didn’t last much longer. Z-Boy finally got fed up and quit. Soon after, I was fired for not showing up at all one day.

We were both relieved, but we were so jaded that a very interesting idea developed.

When we were all hanging out smoking some of Toffa’s weed, having a typical bull session and making each other laugh, out of nowhere Zach threw out a question: “Why don’t we just get some guns and fuckin’ rob Wendy’s?”

The words hung in the dead silence.

I shook my head, took a hit from the joint, and forgot all about it.

However, what had started off as a harmless joke kept coming up all the time. As our discussions took on a more serious tone, I could tell everyone was thinking the same thing:
Let’s explore this concept.
The next thing I knew, we were circling Z-Boy’s kitchen table devising an actual plan to knock over Wendy’s.

Since Z-Boy and I had worked at the place, we still had a few sets of uniforms each—enough for all of us. The basic idea was that we would dress up as Wendy’s employees. Just as the restaurant was being closed up for the night, we would calmly walk in and catch the staff by surprise. We figured the workers would see us and go about their business mopping the floor, counting out the registers, and finishing their closing routine. Then we would rush the counter and jack those suckers for everything they had.

Terry declined to participate. He was a little soft when it came to the criminal aspect of the crew. The rest of us agreed the method was so simple it was genius, but there was only one sure way to find out.

After spending a few more days hashing out the remaining details of our plan, we decided everything was lined up perfectly. We summoned our courage, put our uniforms on, and stepped out into the night. We decided to use Fran’s mother’s (my aunt Vallia’s) car as our getaway vehicle, and I would be the driver. The Wendy’s Bandits were about to strike for the first time.

While I waited in the car with Fran, Z-Boy and Wendell ran in. Less than five minutes later, they raced out and hopped in. I slowly pulled out and drove away nice and easy so as not to draw any attention.

As we headed down the road, Zach said, “Holy shit, Book, that was so easy and smooth. You should’ve seen it.” He was huffing and puffing, so out of breath he could barely tell me about it.

He said they’d casually walked in, and while Wendell had positioned himself near the bathroom hall to stand watch, Z-Boy himself had strolled to the register and started waving around an unloaded .45, demanding they give the money over or he would blow their brains out. Of course, no Wendy’s employee would risk life and limb over a little cash. As fast as they could, those suckers behind the counter had stuffed everything from the register into a couple of drive-through sacks and handed them over. Before they even had time to process what had happened, the boys were out and into the car for our getaway.

As I drove away, my heart was pounding. I expected to look in the rearview mirror and see a cop on our tail, sirens blaring, lights flashing.

It wasn’t until we got back to my apartment that the extreme paranoia lifted. Now nothing but the excitement of our heist remained. We dumped the cash out of the bags into a messy heap on the table and sorted through it. When we had counted everything up, it was about eight hundred dollars.

We split the money four ways. Our two hundred dollars each wasn’t exactly the haul of the century, but when we combined that with the euphoria from what we had just done, we could only come to one conclusion—we
had
to do it again.

Almost immediately, we began revising the plan. That first time had been pretty clean, but it had been a learning experience. The most obvious change was to target something farther away. Hitting our own Wendy’s had been a completely risky decision that could have really cost us, but the bitterness Z-Boy and I felt toward that place had blinded our better judgment.

We also decided to pool our money and rent a neutral apartment to serve as a base of operations. At our new hideout located at a complex called Park Village, we could safely stash our loot with no worries of a trail leading to our personal homes.

A few weeks later, we hit for the second time without a hitch. After that, we went on a spree, robbing about twelve Wendy’s locations over the next four months. The uniforms always caught the legitimate employees off guard. They simply didn’t see it coming until it was way too late.

With each successive robbery, our machine ran better. We never saw ourselves as hard-core criminals but as dudes who merely wanted some cash and weren’t interested in menial labor to get it. We made it a point never to hurt anybody. Aside from the trauma of having the daylights scared out of them by gun-wielding dudes screaming in their faces to hand over money, those people always went home unscathed.

We were lucky none of the Wendy’s workers had guns under the counter to retaliate with. For all we knew, they did but froze in the heat of the moment or didn’t want to chance being heroes and winding up shot. Our guns were unloaded, but they had no way of knowing that.

It was not long at all before all the major media outlets picked up the story of our bold string of robberies. One morning I walked into a convenience store for a coffee, and after creaming, sweetening, and sipping, I almost spit out my java all over the floor. On the front pages of all the local newspapers on the racks were headlines referring to us as the Wendy’s Bandits. Seeing the story in print like that was insane. I bought a few copies for the boys, who got a big kick out of it too. We felt like the James Gang from the eighteen hundreds. From then on, we could not wait to pick up the latest edition after each of our hits. We loved to see headlines like “Wendy’s Bandits Strike Again!”

The Houston Police Department poured on the pressure by issuing statements on television, offering a five-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to our capture. Man, that was more cash than we were making. Each haul brought us between a couple hundred and four thousand bucks.

Not one of us was saving a dime either. We threw our cash around as quickly as it came and were not discreet with our newfound wealth. The parties were nonstop. Our generosity even spilled over to Terry. Even though he hadn’t done anything to help, sometimes we cut him in on the take just because he was one of us.

We also felt we needed some real flash, and jewelry became the obsession of our spending sprees. I bought big gold and silver ropes and chain necklaces. At one point, I had so much shine around my neck that Mr. T would have stopped dead in his tracks in awe.

While all this was going on, I was still unemployed and sitting around all day while the bills piled up. It seemed like a good idea to connect with Billie and Toffa yet again to see what was up. Sure, robbing Wendy’s was bringing in some money, but the way I was spending, it sure was not enough to keep me alive long. I needed another source of income, and selling weed was an easy in. I called my sister and soon suited up to get back in the game.

It felt good to be involved with Billie and Toffa again, but man, I was really burning the candle at both ends. Here I was robbing Wendy’s restaurants all over Houston as well as dealing drugs. I had a steady stream of anxiety and was looking over my shoulder at all times, but I was drawn to that lifestyle. After all these years, chasing the adrenaline dragon was an organic part of my life. Financially, the combination of the heists and the dealing was paying off just as planned. I was doing well for myself. But occasionally, I could feel the strings attached to all this fast living. My hectic lifestyle took its toll on me in various ways. Most notably, my attitude was rapidly degenerating. With each passing week, each successive robbery, and each sold bag of weed, the pressure wore my patience thinner.

The boys and I hung out every Sunday at MacGregor Park, one of our official homes away from home. It was always jammed on the weekends with hot chicks and dudes cruising in their cool cars with the tops down and music blasting. If you wanted to see and be seen, this was the place to be. MacGregor Park also attracted gangs and other cliques like ours, and sometimes the whole environment was like a powder keg with a fuse just waiting to be lit.

One Sunday the five of us were at our usual corner in the park, relaxing, feeling on top of the world as the incognito Wendy’s Bandits with pockets full of cash as well as pounds of gold and silver around our necks. By that time, Z-Boy and I were almost always strapped with guns just in case anything happened and we needed to be ready.

While we were sitting there taking in the sights and sounds of the park, this one dude came slowly cruising up in a long parade of nice cars. He had a beautiful girl sitting next to him and a really nice gold chain. He smiled and waved to people as if he were grand marshal of the parade.

All of a sudden out of nowhere, this young punk ran up, snatched his gold right off his neck, and screamed, “What are you gonna do about that, you punk motherfucker? Get the fuck out of the car and show me what you’re gonna do.”